Research Programs

The Stanford Center for Sleep Medicine is coordinating a myriad researchers and physicians involved in sleep. This field touches not only many traditional medical disciplines and specialties, but also hybrid areas such as bioengineering, genetics, and biochemistry. Therefore, integrating research and treatment requires reaching across traditional academic boundaries to take an interdisciplinary approach.

Stanford’s Sleep Center will provide seed grants for pilot studies, help affiliated faculty to prepare outside grant applications, and provide the structure for much needed cross-fertilization across the university. Crucially, the division will design and implement the systems that link researchers all along the cycle from basic science through clinical care.

In addition, the sleep center will coordinate sleep education for Stanford undergraduates, medical students, other graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows. The center will also expand Stanford’s outreach efforts to primary care physicians and their patients, an essential ingredient in the national effort on sleep medicine, which the university is help­ing to lead.

Research Labs

The Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine is comprised of eight Core Research Labs and collaborates with many other researchers both within Stanford and outside institutions around the world. To learn more about the different research programs, click here.

Recent Publications

To see some of the exciting journal articles that have been published this year by members of the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine, click here.

Participate in Research

If there are currently no studies open for enrollment that match your situtation, enroll in our Sleep Research Subject Database project to be contacted when new studies become available. We regularly have new clinical studies opening across a wide number of medical specialties.

Why is Research Important?

Sleep-related problems affect millions of people in all walks of life. They have a major impact on society, yet we still don’t have a good understanding of exactly why we sleep or what causes sleep disorders. We do, however, know that sleep is vital to our well-being, and is closely linked with serious health and mood problems such as high blood pressure, obesity, and depression.

Sleep research is revealing how genetic and biological markers are associated with sleep disorders. Work at Stanford has been instrumental in identifying genes that correlate with apnea and RLS as well as how levels of the hormone hypocretin are linked with narcolepsy.

We use the latest research to help properly diagnose and treat each patient. Stanford pursues research side by side with patient care and many of the physicians who see patients every day also conduct our research studies. Stanford’s goal is to establish gold-standard protocols for patient evaluation, treatment and outcome research, and to share those protocols with other researchers across the nation.